Grounding

Spring is just round the corner and No31 is beginning its 2026 programme. We are very excited to be putting on Grounding, an exhibition by Jenny Ozwell, Tadeusz Deręgowski and Jane Rutherford. This is landscape painting that is direct, present and alive.

The three artists in this exhibition inhabit the landscapes they paint; whether it is Jenny Ozwell’s seascapes, Tadeusz Deręgowski’s forests and towns or Jane Rutherford’s gardens. They of course share other commonalities; an economy of mark making, a desire to convey a sense of time and place and so on. But above all they share a desire for a direct engagement with their subject and the materiality of their medium. They seek a kind of honesty or truth in their artwork.

I was talking to an artist friend, Ed, the other day. He is not a painter of landscapes, but never-the-less maintained that the idea of landscape was a context for his artwork, being the place he inhabits and the place in which his experience occurs. While this on one level is self-evident, if applied to Jenny, Tadeusz and Jane, who do paint landscape, one can immediately see that the relationship between the artist, the place they inhabit and their subject becomes indivisible. As such, qualities that landscape painters have traditionally been associated with, such as depth, space, light take on new meanings because these qualities now describe the artist’s own reality – whatever that is.

The landscape artist shows us a glimpse of both their interior and exterior world, and as such a landscape painting is less a depiction and more an insight. There’s an engaging simplicity in this relationship. We are invited to see the artist’s world as they experience it. Put another way, painting a landscape is akin to making a mirror in which we can see reflected, not ourselves, but the space inhabited by the artist.

Landscape painting can be a contentious topic, being rooted in depictions of Eden, with its historical associations of ownership and inequality. However, I have sought here to focus on the process adopted by the painter in their depiction of landscape rather than its wider societal or cultural significance. This is important because in generalising about the practice, we are in danger of missing the significance and subtlety of the individual’s understanding of their world as made apparent in their artwork.

Tadeusz Deręgowski

Tadeusz grew up in Aberdeen, where he again lives after many years abroad, mostly in Brazil. He studied painting at Edinburgh University, and since has traveled extensively for painting, including trips to North Africa, Latin America, India and the USA.

If you’re interested in buying work by Tadeusz online, some work is available here, in the No31 artists area.

Jenny Ozwell

Jenny has been making pots for 15 years in her studio in Jedburgh. Jenny works in earthenware and porcelain and has more recently been enjoying experimenting with non-functional forms and larger pieces, employing gestural mark making to evoke seascapes.

Jane Rutherford

Jane’s artwork focuses on the patterns of the landscape, created and shaped by human intervention over time. Her recent work is informed by memory and concentrates on the boundaries found in her immediate local environment. Jane has worked in Scotland, Brazil and Ireland and now lives in Scottish Borders.

If you’re interested in buying work by Jane online, some work is available here, in the No31 artists area.